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Essentialism, historicity, and ethicalization: rethinking Husserl’s project of phenomenological theology

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Husserl’s conception of theology and God is a lesser noticed aspect in his phenomenological system. This paper is devoted to a return to Husserl’s text, reconstructing the implicit threads and essential features of his phenomenological theology. First, I will outline the general features of a phenomenology of religion and theology, arguing that it is not without historicity, which is not in conflict with the essentialism that phenomenology has always pursued. Then, Sec. 2 focuses on the analysis of teleology, considering which is the true teleology leading to God, pointing out that it ultimately resorts to an ethical approach. Sec. 3 and 4 provide an in-depth textual analysis mainly based on the Grenzprobleme der Phänomenologie, concluding that they are all fundamentally ethical-relevant and capable of being in harmony with each other. Last, I will respond to some criticisms of Husserl’s conception of God, the most major of which are Mall’s and Held’s. Of course, I do not mean to suggest that Husserl has perfectly integrated his project of theology and God into the phenomenology program—it is precisely these criticisms that motivate us to reconstruct Husserl’s fragmented narrative into a self-consistent system.

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Notes

  1. Husserl (1976a, p. 335).

  2. Mall (1991, pp. 6–8).

  3. Husserl (1976a, pp. 67, 335).

  4. Ibid., pp. 6, 7, 62.

  5. Husserl (1987, pp. 45, 48). All English translations and most emphasis in this essay are mine.

  6. Heidegger(2007, p. 149).

  7. Husserl (1987, pp. 46–47).

  8. Cairns (1976, p. 46).

  9. Cf Varga (2021).

  10. Husserl (1989, p. 66).

  11. Husserl (2008, pp. 165–166).

  12. Lo (2008, p. 120).

  13. Held (2010, p. 724).

  14. See Sowa and Vongehr’s introduction to Grenzprobleme der Phänomenologie (Husserl 2013, p. LXXVI). When this book is referred to again below, it will be abbreviated to Grenz.

  15. Lo explains later that the search for the primordial foundation of absolute being is not a theological motive that leads to the question of God because the latter arising first from the analysis of the motivational context of the intentional consciousness performance (Lo 2008, p. 124); and she goes further to point out that the God so oriented “does not like the pure ego.” This should be an important reason why she excludes other ways and in favor of the teleological one (Ibid., p. 165).

  16. Husserl (2013, pp. 228, 248, 253).

  17. See Bello (2016).

  18. Husserl (1976b, p. 109).

  19. Ibid., p. 124.

  20. See e.g. Husserl (2013, pp. 165, 253).

  21. Bello (2016, pp. 276–278).

  22. Cf Husserl (1956, pp. 392–394).

  23. See Lo (2008, p. 109).

  24. For “will” in the broad sense is the very intentionality. Cf Lo (2008, pp. 166–168).

  25. Cairns (1976, p. 14) recorded that Husserl said God is “the community of transcendental egos which ‘creates’ a world.” However, God is not the monadic totality per se, but the entelechy or Telos of this totality’s development as we’ll reveal. Similarly, Laycock’s formulation (1986, p. 181) is Husserl speculatively identifies the intersubjectivity phenomenon with divine envisionment, but he then says that the former is the mediator of God’s viewing of the world. Our inquiry about the way God relates to intersubjectivity may complement his conclusion without comprising a regressus ad infinitum together with it.

  26. Husserl (1973a, p. 381).

  27. Hart (1986, p. 148); Laycock (1986, p. 177). However, Laycock’s solution still seems unable to solve the difficulty concerning the teleological order, i.e., why the evolutionary direction of the community necessarily ascends toward God. As we will show below, this order of evolution can only be secured by means of God as the Telos of love or an absolute value; in this sense, as Smith points out, the teleology of intersubjectivity “takes on a specifically moral accent” (Smith 2003, p. 207).

  28. Husserl (2013, p. 177).

  29. Ibid., pp. 91, 92, 424.

  30. Ibid., p. 261, see p. 166 for more.

  31. Husserl (1989, p. 33; 1991, p. 85).

  32. Husserl (1987, p. 281; 2013, pp. 242, 246).

  33. Bello (2016, p. 276).

  34. Husserl (1988, p. 181), where Husserl wrote “Über-Realitat,” while in the Grenz (2013, p. 251) he used “Überrealität.”

  35. Husserl (1973b, p. 300).

  36. Kern (2018, p. 16).

  37. In fact, Husserl already uses the expression “transcendental personality” in Grenz, but in the same sentence he says that his talk is based on a super-transcendental (übertranszendentalen) subjective sense (2013, p. 250). So here I still use the new word “super-personality” to convey a similar implication.

  38. Husserl (2013, p. 168).

  39. Ibid.

  40. Ibid., pp. 92, 424.

  41. Ibid., pp. 91, 242.

  42. Husserl (1989, p. 34; 2013, p. 234).

  43. Husserl (2013, p. 250).

  44. Ibid., pp. 167–168.

  45. Husserl (1976b, pp. 175, 351).

  46. Held (2010, p. 735).

  47. Lo (2008, pp. 157–158).

  48. Kern (1964, pp. 301–303); Melle (1991, p. 135); Husserl (1994, III/5, pp. 3–6).

  49. Lo (2008, p. 161).

  50. Husserl (2013, p. 238).

  51. Ibid., p. 255.

  52. Husserl (2004, p. 130).

  53. Husserl (2013, pp. 469–471, 423).

  54. Ibid., pp. 236, 344.

  55. Ibid., p. 177.

  56. Husserl (1987, p. 288).

  57. Cf Hart (1990, p. 126).

  58. Husserl (1988, p. 181).

  59. Husserl (2013, pp. 168, 336).

  60. Husserl (Ms. B I 4, 55), cited from Lo (2008, p. 176).

  61. Husserl (1994, III/3, p. 494; 2013, p. 254; 1973a, p. 610; 2013, p. 447).

  62. Husserl (1994, III/4, p. 275).

  63. Husserl (2013, p. 406).

  64. Ibid., p. 168.

  65. Husserl (1973a, p. 610).

  66. Husserl (2008, p. 167).

  67. Regarding the relationship between theology/religion and science, reference can be made to Husserl’s statement that an autonomous science, is an unconfessional way to God (Husserl 2013, p. 259); In addition, a very tolerant remark can be found in a private conversation Husserl had in his later years, in which he said even naturalists with no faith at all can “devote” themselves to their science because the real science is good—even without leading to religion. On the other hand, it cannot be said that a science that is ultimately guided toward religion and God is not real science (Jaegerschmid, 1981, p. 49).

  68. Husserl (1956, p. 289).

  69. Cf Strasser (1979, p. 330).

  70. Cf (Melle, 1991, pp. 134–135; 2002, pp. 247–248; 2007, pp. 14–15).

  71. Husserl (2013, p. 177).

  72. Husserl (1994, III/7, p. 190).

  73. Husserl (2004, p. 341).

  74. Kern (2018, p. 16).

  75. Laycock (1986, pp. 169, 180).

  76. Held (2010, pp. 726–727).

  77. Strasser (1978, p. 373).

  78. See the famous discussion on “market truth”- Husserl (1974, p. 284).

  79. Husserl (2013, pp. 250–251).

  80. Ibid., pp. 246–247. Interestingly, Held concludes Lebendige Gegenwart (1966, pp. 183–184) with a passage in this manuscript.

  81. Husserl (1976b, p. 109).

  82. As Laycock (1986, pp. 171–172) states, in phenomenology, God can only originate from God-phenomenon and can only be disclosed through reflection on my concrete lived experience, which is a necessary requirement for the consistent application of the phenomenological method; besides, he also explicitly proposes that God (as the divine Absolute) is both infinitely remote and relatively approximable (Ibid., 182) although there he does not affirm such a God is an immanent transcendence.

  83. Mall (1991, pp. 4, 10; pp. 6, 10); Cf Strasser (1959, p. 130).

  84. In contrast to Mall, Hart notes this distinction, which is reflected in his claim to apply transcendental phenomenological principles to the transcendent world and to reconstruct the latter in compliance with the former (Hart 1986, pp. 98–99).

  85. Mall (1991, pp. 5, 7).

  86. We do not want to ignore the proper part of Held’s view in this article. For example, he specified Husserl’s God as “the Good that ensures the universal attainability of granting and fulfillment” (Held 2010, p. 727). Moreover, he refers to Husserl’s God by the name agathón, which is originated from Plato, and states that “Even God is also bound to the perspectivity, this does not have to mean that He can could no longer stand as agathón for the attainability of unanimity” (Ibid., p. 730). All this suggests Held was also aware of the ethical considerations of Husserl’s God, however, he did not draw a positive conclusion ultimately.

  87. Ibid., p. 738.

  88. Ibid., pp. 737–738.

  89. Ibid., pp. 733, 737.

  90. Cf Lee (1993, pp. 242–243); Hart (1986, pp. 148–149).

  91. Husserl (1974, pp. 257–258).

  92. Cf e. g. Pickard (2003, p. 59); Mall (1991, p. 12); Held (2010, p. 727).

  93. See Kern (2018, p. 88) and Drummond (2018) respectively for example.

  94. Husserl (2013, pp. 406–407).

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    Jianhao Zhou

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Zhou, J. Essentialism, historicity, and ethicalization: rethinking Husserl’s project of phenomenological theology. Cont Philos Rev 56, 185–202 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11007-022-09598-5

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